The present invention generally relates to manufacturing, remanufacturing or repairing replaceable imaging components, and more particularly to apparatus and techniques for a shipping cap securing a dongle gear extending from the end of a drum or roller, such as an organic photo conductor (OPC) drum. The drum or roller may be used in a replaceable imaging cartridge adapted for holding marking material, such as toner.
In the imaging industry, there is a growing market for the remanufacture and refurbishing of various types of replaceable imaging cartridges such as toner cartridges, drum cartridges, inkjet cartridges, and the like. These imaging cartridges are used in imaging devices such as laser printers, xerographic copiers, inkjet printers, facsimile machines and the like, for example. Imaging cartridges, once spent, are unusable for their originally intended purpose. Without a refurbishing process these cartridges would simply be discarded, even though the cartridge itself may still have potential life. As a result, techniques have been developed specifically to address this issue. These processes may entail, for example, the disassembly of the various structures of the cartridge, replacing toner or ink, cleaning, adjusting or replacing any worn components and reassembling the imaging cartridge.
OPC drums may include a coated aluminum tube having hubs extending from each end of the tube. One hub may include a gear, such as a dongle gear, which extends from the end of the hub, engages with the printer and is driven by the printer to rotate the OPC drum and/or other combination of elements. Typically, the OPC drum is rotatably held in place by opposing plates or brackets. During the remanufacturing of a laser printer toner cartridge, the OPC drum may need to be replaced due to the wear or damage to the OPC drum. The replacement OPC drum assembly may include a replacement dongle gear attached to one end of the replacement OPC drum. The dongle gear may shift or pivot when the replacement OPC drum assembly is not installed in the cartridge. The present invention provides for a shipping cap which attaches to the end of the OPC drum assembly and maintains the correlation of the dongle with the OPC's geometric center line.